5 Fen Guanghua Shangdian

Guanghua Shangdian — the Guanghua Store — was established by the Chinese Communist Party in Yan'an in 1938 as a cooperative trading organization supplying the border region population. Its scrip served as functional small-change currency at a time when metal coins were scarce and the Nationalist-issued fabi was both mistrusted and in short supply across CCP-controlled territory. Notes of this denomination were high-circulation, low-survival items: used hard, often in outdoor markets, and rarely preserved.

The Yan'an printing infrastructure of this period was primitive by any standard. That these notes exist at all is partly luck.